7
Payday
Kira was trapped beneath the surface of a blinding white sea of cold light. Her lungs burned as an unyielding weight pressed her relentlessly to the frozen bottom. She commanded her arms to move but they would not obey. She fought the all-consuming urge to open her mouth and suck in great suffocating lungfuls but she could feel her resolve being gradually overridden by her autonomic nervous system. Once her consciousness blinked out, her body would betray her wishes and sign its own death warrant by gasping for the air it desperately needed but would never find. As the warm, dark curtain of hypoxia fell, calm replaced panic. This isn’t so bad. Grandmother, I’m coming to you. Grandmother! Grandmother?
✽✽✽
White light dazzled her again, then diffusing as a dark bulbous shape interposed. She tried to focus her eyes but couldn’t. She moved her mouth, but an odd metallic taste sizzled across her dry tongue, like the current of a weak battery. She could feel her tongue and lips moving spastically as she tried to form the words. She heard a sharp intake of breath, not her own, and the dark shape swam out of her field of view. The light faded again, this time into a timeless sea of soft blissful velvet. As the billowing waves closed over her head, the urgent low murmur of voices faded distant into sleep.
✽✽✽
The penlight clicked off.
“Good aperture response in both units.” The white coated man, a doctor she guessed, or maybe a technician looked behind him at the mirrored observation window. He spoke to persons unseen. “I think short periods will be okay, but she still needs rest. Her electrolytes will take two to three days to normalise.” He moved out of the way and for the first time Kira could clearly see herself in the silvered glass opposite the hospital bed she was strapped to. Thick nylon webbing crisscrossed her upper body, restraining her arms at the wrist, elbow, and just below the shoulder. A sash belt ran across her waist, securing her to the bed with another crossing her ankles. Her head was clamped into an unyielding frame from which multiple wires and cables sprouted. She suspected it was an induction interface for her augmentations. A digitally controlled IV ran into the back of her left hand and other tubing which she guessed was another catheter, appeared from under the sheets and disappeared over the side of the bed.
Despite the head restraint, thanks to the reflections in the observation window she could see most of the room. To her left, drawn curtains shrouded a window through which she could hear the muffled rumble of traffic. Over the past few days she had woken and seen sunlight or streetlight peeking through at various angles depending on the time of day or night. Either side of her bed were racks of equipment she recognised from previous hospital stays, some of it seemingly identical to the units she’d seen in Spencer’s cage back in the warehouse. On her right were two doors. One was solid looking with a glass window covered by a liquid crystal shutter. Occasionally this would blink open and an indistinct face would peer in. Early on, this had been followed by the delivery of more medication which made her sleep. Today, it had preceded the entry of the man who had just finished conducting a lengthy physical examination. The other door was open, and she could smell the round heaviness of hospital bleach, so she decided it probably led to a bathroom.
“Hey.”
The man in white’s head whipped around in surprise at the sound of her voice.
“Hey,” she croaked again, her voice stronger this time. “Where am I? What is this place?”
Hastily he pocketed his penlight and grabbed a chart hanging from the end of her bed. Ignoring her, he looked briefly at a monitor beside her bed and scrawled something on the chart before replacing it and turning towards the door. As he exited, he glanced at the observation window. In the mirrored glass, she could see him raise his eyebrows as he silently communicated to whoever was on the other side. The door closed with the thump of magnetic locks. After a wait that stretched indeterminately beyond her reckoning, the door opened again.
He was older than her or Spencer. If she’d had to guess, she would have pegged his age at close to that of the Doctor. He was small of build and carried himself with the comfortable ease of being the most important person in whatever room he happened to be in at the time. The door closed behind him as he carried a chair from against the wall to the side of her bed. With a rustle of expensive fabric, he sat back with crossed arms, tilted his head and regarded Kira with mild curiosity.
“How are you feeling?”
“Where am I?”
“Answer my question and I shall answer yours.”
“I can’t move, I don’t know where I am, what day it is or why I’m here. So I don’t think I’m feeling very much of anything at the moment,” she replied.
“My question was more clinical, in regard to your general wellbeing and current physical state, rather than the philosophical. This is a private clinic, of sorts. Do you have any pain? Are you in any discomfort?”
“My head is in a vice and I’m tied to a bed. I wouldn’t exactly call this comfortable.”
“My apologies for the restraints – they became necessary whilst we conducted your re-calibrations. You became quite physical when the technicians attempted to undo the damage done by such an unsophisticated flash job. Beyond your control, of course. There was a kind of ‘self-destruct’ triggered when you left Joy Luck that did quite an effective job of obliterating the firmware in your Augmentations. If it had worked entirely as intended, your autonomic nervous system would have been suppressed and we would not be having this conversation right now. Luckily our mutual acquaintance was not as skilled at code smithing as he thought himself to be.”
“Spencer?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he? I’m gonna kill him.”
“Ah,” said her interrogator. He smiled ruefully. “Unfortunately, you would be towards the end of a rather long line, and recent events mean that many people must forgo that measure of satisfaction.”
“He’s dead?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“His heart went. In the end.”
“Surprised you could find it,” Kira spat bitterly.
“If it’s any consolation, he was most displeased when he realised that you were the reason he couldn’t simply return the money.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Please. If I hold at my disposal the resources to repair the butchery of your augmentations and to comfortably discuss facilitating the butcher’s demise, then please assume that I am not a fool, and that I know more that I let on.”
“If you put it like that, you must know where the money is. From your central accounts.”
He smiled thinly. “The server connection to Joy Luck was temporarily disrupted. Only momentarily, but conveniently rendering the accounting data incomplete. If I had been able to recover the money myself, then restoring your faculties would have been unnecessary. By the end of our conversation Spencer was most eager to return it, but when he directed us to the account he created for you, it contained a zero balance. He could not explain how that occurred, and I do not doubt his sincerity.”
“Well, you tell me the story and I’ll fill in the blanks for you when you go off the rails. But first I want out of this jig.”
“You really are not in the position to demand anything, you know,” he said evenly.
“But evidently I know something you don’t, so that puts me in a better position than you think. Holding any cards is better than holding none, especially if the guy across from you doesn’t know what they are.”
He reflected upon this for a moment, then turned and nodded slightly to the mirrored wall. He turned back and regarded her silently as a few minutes later, two technicians entered with a silver trolley and proceeded to remove Kira’s restraints and release her head from the clamp. One of the technicians gestured enquiringly towards the catheter tube.
“Later,” said the interrogator, “after I’m done.”
“Oh please,�
� scoffed Kira. “The man who casually talks about torture is put off by a little medical procedure?”
“I still maintain a sense of personal propriety, thank you.” He nodded at the technicians who responded with curt bows before departing the room door locking again behind them. “Now, where were we?”
“Let’s start with who you are and why I should tell you anything.”
He sighed heavily; a man unused to having to justify himself.
“The organisation I represent holds many business concerns. Ultimately, the events you were party to have affected the perceived security of several these concerns. A man of my seniority does not usually deal directly with such events, however the broader implications of what transpired means that I have been despatched to resolve the situation.”
“Spencer must have really fucked you guys over, huh.”
“That would be putting it mildly. However, we aren’t the only ones who have been,” he smiled humourlessly at her, “’fucked’ as you so eloquently put it. It was his expectation that you would not be around to assist us with our enquiries, and if it weren’t for our intervention he would have succeeded in that endeavour, so some display of gratitude wouldn’t be inappropriate at this point.” His eyes bored into hers. She fought the urge to look away.
“Fine. Start and I’ll jump in.”
“Spencer was a consultant for us. His talent was in figuring out ways in which we might be exposed to… irregular losses, and then in engineering solutions to prevent those losses from occurring. Occasionally we would employ him to reverse engineer the way in which someone had attempted to game our systems.”
“He was your white hat retainer.”
“Well, more gray than white, as it turned out. Despite being exceptionally well-compensated, he attempted to exploit his professional knowledge for personal gain. The end-result being that we are meeting here today.” He spread his hands, showing his palms. “We know he recruited you, although the job wouldn’t have been much of a sell. You have vagrancy violations in eleven districts and several counts of petty theft and card skimming against you. Money must have been tight when the insurance company deducted the cost of your augmentations from the ordered settlement. Your antibodies were dangerously high when they admitted you here. How long has it been since you’ve been on a proper regimen of immunosuppressives?”
Kira’s face burnt hot with shame. She looked at her fists as they clenched the sheets. He continued.
“So personally, I do not hold anything against you for your involvement in this… misadventure; after all, we are all opportunists. But the organisation I represent must report to its shareholders that this matter has been resolved, that it cannot occur again, and that a sizable amount of missing money has been recovered. After Spencer flashed you with his buggy firmware, I assume he tested it? Using a machine similar to the one in Joy Luck. Or identical?”
Without meeting his eyes, she nodded.
“Can you describe the provenance of this machine at all?”
“Um… it came from a truck. He was worried about being late with the delivery.”
“The driver?”
“Yeah. But I never saw him. Spencer made me wait behind a screen.”
“Where was this?”
She felt her heart race. Could she betray the Doctor?
“I… I can’t say exactly. But it doesn’t really matter, does it? I mean, the machine was packed up again and sent off after we tested it, so it’s not there anymore anyway.”
“I need to confirm that there were no other parties involved.”
“Uhh, no. Nobody else.” She raised her eyes to meet his and hoped they didn’t waver. He stared at her, holding her gaze for a long moment.
“What happened next?”
“He took me to a salon and then to Pearl and Joy Luck.”
“No stops along the way? Remember to be completely honest with me. You are not the only one who holds undisclosed information.”
“Alright. But at the end of this, what happens to me? Why should I tell you if you’re just gonna kill me?”
He exhaled, showing a sign of frustration for the first time. “I have never made such a threat. We have gone to a significant amount of trouble to remedy your personal health issues so that we can gain a complete picture of what has taken place, in order to recover a significant amount of money. I do not threaten, I promise – one can make an empty threat, but promises must be kept. One’s word is one’s honour.”
Kira digested this silently.
“How significant an amount are we talking? Spencer was talking about bankrupting you guys.”
“It would take more than rigging a pachinko machine to render my superiors insolvent. But the amount is not insubstantial, and the manner in which it was stolen is also of pertinent interest.”
“What would it be worth to you, getting the money back?”
“I suppose we could let you leave. But I should mention that as part of our restoration of your Augmentations, our coders modified your firmware slightly so that any further tampering would trigger the exploit that Spencer sought to use to silence you. And our coders are much more thorough than he was.”
“Well then I’m back to square one. Not much of a choice.”
“You have a counter-offer?”
“I thought you guys didn’t negotiate.”
“Not at the level your contemporaries would be familiar with, but we are not talking about petty street-dealings here. What do you propose?”
Kira thought quickly.
“If you get the money back, no harm no foul, right?” she began. “And if you know how he took it, then it’s really been just another security exercise. Which you’ve budgeted for.”
“You are proposing we pay you what we would have paid Spencer?”
“Why not? This is just another business transaction after all.”
He snorted at that. “Anything else? A penthouse apartment perhaps?”
“Actually, since you’ve offered, there is something you could throw in to sweeten the deal.”
8
The Green Zone
Sweat ran into Kira’s eyes, stinging them. She paused, wiping her dripping forehead with the back of a grimy hand, before returning to pulling weeds. According to the village almanac, she should get one more harvest before the first frosts came and hardened the earth. Winters north of the thirty-eighth parallel were not as brutal as they had been before the bubble burst and reunification, but they were still bitterly cold.
Clearing the last unwanted plant from the garden bed, Kira sat back on her haunches and stretched her shoulders and neck. It was just over six months since she’d walked into Joy Luck Hall as Spencer’s biomechanical bag man. Just under six months since she’d been wheeled from the private clinic where she’d negotiated her way out of the southern sprawl and loaded onto a van for the Green Zone.
Kira still remembered the incredulous look on the interrogator’s face when she explained how after she had seen Spencer watching her through the window at Clarity, the store clerk had asked her in lowered tones if she needed to use the back door but Kira had instead asked if it was possible to transfer some credit onto a new chip, as her ‘boyfriend’ tightly controlled the one she had. The woman clucked sympathetically and kindly obliged, even gifting a chip sleeve (“Just a new stock sample, dear, nothing really”) to hide the new card. Then after the machine had paid out into the new account, she’d dropped the new chip into a service incinerator the Joy Luck staff used to dispose of the contents of ashtrays, but not before memorising the account codes etched on the back.
The interrogator had leaned back in his chair when she’d finished.
“So he really did have no idea where the money was. And what were you going to do with such a vast sum? Take it yourself?”
“I—really hadn’t thought that far ahead. I just wanted leverage. I was going to give him the account codes when he lived up to his end of the bargain. If he lived up to his end of the b
argain.”
“Well, a promise is a promise. You’ve kept your word. I shall keep mine.”
Kira squinted as the setting sun hit her in the eyes. The exposure controls in her implants helped a little, but they couldn’t entirely compensate against direct sunlight. Sunset seemed to take a lot longer in the Green Zone, but she guessed it was more due to the lack of towering buildings that blocked out the sunlight. The desperate state of the North before The Crash meant that urban sprawl hadn’t really taken over, and vast swathes of undeveloped farmland and forests had been designated for preservation as the Green Zone, with population and access tightly controlled as a result.
It was as best an outcome as she could imagine. She got her ticket across the Line into the Green Zone, they got their money back. Everybody got what they wanted. Except Spencer. But, she reasoned, he got what he deserved. She thought occasionally of the Doctor. It was his warning to have some kind of a backup plan that had spurred her to switch the credit chips. She wished she had some way of contacting him, but she knew it was too dangerous for both of them if she were to try and seek him out. Part of her agreement with the Interrogator was that she was to remain in the Green Zone. Although she couldn’t see it, she knew that they were keeping tabs on her somehow. She didn’t mind though. She had no intention of trading the clean open skies of the Green Zone for the choking claustrophobia of the Metro.
Kira had used much of Spencer’s payout to buy into a village, which got her a small cottage with a large market garden. She got by through bartering with others around the village, and any credit left from the buy-in would pay for more than five lifetimes of anti-rejection meds for her implants. She’d been quasi-adopted by an elderly couple on the village council who had been helping her get into the routine of village life. She looked forward to the long winter, when the older woman had promised to teach her the traditional silken knot-work the village was famous for.
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